Jurisdictional Immunities of States and International Organizations

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Chukwuemeke Okeke
Keyword(s):  
International Organizations ◽  
International Courts ◽  
National Courts ◽  
State Immunity ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
The Law ◽  
Diplomatic Immunity ◽  
Heads Of State ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Conceptual Confusion

This book covers the relationship between the jurisdictional immunities of States and international organizations, addressing their similarities and dissimilarities. Their relationship with diplomatic immunity is also examined. It considers that the immunity of international organizations was historically conceived in terms of diplomatic immunity and State immunity. The major aim of this book is to clarify the conceptual confusion that has often bedeviled the understanding of the law of the (different but interrelated) jurisdictional immunities of both States and international organizations. The approach is to holistically analyze and synthesize select and relevant opinions of international courts and national courts. To achieve this, the book focuses more on what the law is than on what it should be. An understanding of the law is more useful to a practitioner than a criticism of it. The book is not an exegesis on everything immunity. The distinct jurisdictional immunities of heads of State and of diplomats are beyond the scope of this book, and are only tangentially examined. The book concludes by making the case that the jurisdictional immunities of States and international organizations are not only sustainable but also necessary for the international legal order to foster international relations and cooperation. The author intends to position the book to be of use both to scholars and to practicing lawyers and legal advisers in government and international organizations, as well as to lawyers whose practice concerns issues and laws of privileges and immunities.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Chukwuemeke Okeke
Keyword(s):  
International Organizations ◽  
Proper Understanding ◽  
State Immunity ◽  
Head Of State ◽  
Diplomatic Immunity ◽  
Conceptual Confusion

This chapter introduces the purpose of the book, which is to clarify the conceptual confusion that has bedeviled the proper understanding of both the jurisdictional immunities of States and of international organizations. It also sets out the scope of the book, which is to cover the similarities and dissimilarities between the jurisdictional immunities of States and international organizations. It examines the distinct rules of diplomatic immunity and head-of-State immunity to the extent they have a bearing on the scope of the immunities of international persons that are the main focus of this book. Furthermore, it examines the nature of jurisdictional immunity and lays out the structure of the book.

Part VIII International Institutional Law, Ch.46 Legal Capacity and Powers

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarooshi Dan
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Legal Capacity ◽  
International Courts ◽  
Legal Personality ◽  
Domestic Courts ◽  
The Law ◽  
National Governments ◽  
The Relationship

The law of international organizations (IOs) is undergoing profound changes, due in large part to the increasingly important role that these organizations have played in exercising powers conferred on them by national governments. This phenomenon has led to concerted attempts by states, international courts and tribunals, and domestic courts to ensure accountability for these exercises of power by imposing corresponding limits on IOs. This chapter focuses, first, on the development of international law relating to the legal personality of IOs, including in this context a brief consideration of the issue of immunity. It then discusses the relationship between states and IOs and the implications of this relationship for the responsibility of states, and in some cases the responsibility of IOs.

The Obligation to Afford Reparation to Injured Individuals

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carla Ferstman
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
International Humanitarian Law ◽  
Humanitarian Law ◽  
Human Rights Treaties ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Right ◽  
Right Of Access ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter considers the consequences of breaches of human rights and international humanitarian law for the responsible international organizations. It concentrates on the obligations owed to injured individuals. The obligation to make reparation arises automatically from a finding of responsibility and is an obligation of result. I analyse who has this obligation, to whom it is owed, and what it entails. I also consider the right of individuals to procedures by which they may vindicate their right to a remedy and the right of access to a court that may be implied from certain human rights treaties. In tandem, I consider the relationship between those obligations and individuals’ rights under international law. An overarching issue is how the law of responsibility intersects with the specialized regimes of human rights and international humanitarian law and particularly, their application to individuals.

scholarly journals Sentenza 238/2014: A Good Case for Law-Reform?

2021 ◽  
pp. 71-89
Author(s):  
Heike Krieger
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Cautious Approach ◽  
National Courts ◽  
State Immunity ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
Post War ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Law Making

AbstractSentenza 238/2014 is an important judgment which does not only concern the concrete case at hand but also pushes for a change in the law of state immunity. However, such attempts at law-making by national courts may not always attain their goal but may exert adverse effects which are harmful for the international legal order. Sentenza 238/2014 may have an impact on three different yet related issues central to the future development of international law: the relationship between international and national law, exceptions to immunities, and individual reparations in cases of mass atrocities.This chapter criticises law-making through non-compliance with international judicial decisions by national courts. Judges in democratic states under the rule of law who try to push for law-reform, by initiating non-compliance with decisions of international courts, should be aware that they may act in the company, and thereby in support of, courts in regimes with autocratic tendencies, such as the Russian Constitutional Court, which refuses to comply with judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. Furthermore, the chapter argues that immunity from jurisdiction and immunity from execution should be kept distinct and that human rights exceptions should not be applied to immunity from execution. Such a differentiation remains justified because measures of constraint against property used for government non-commercial purposes intrude even further onto sovereign rights than the institution of proceedings before courts in the forum state. It is particularly difficult for states to protect assets and other property situated in a foreign state. These assets may therefore be more susceptible to abusive enforcement measures while simultaneously forming an essential basis for the actual conduct of international relations.The chapter concludes by advocating a cautious approach to individual reparations in cases of mass atrocities. This more cautious approach observes the complexities of ending armed conflicts and negotiating peace deals. An individual right to monetary compensation based on civil claims processes does not allow for taking into account broader political considerations related to establishing a stable post-war order. Such a right is conducive to bilateral settlements between the state parties concerned, which might create new injustices towards other groups of victims. It might also overburden negotiations for a settlement to an ongoing armed conflict.The chapter thereby starts from the assumption that the stability of the international legal order itself as guaranteed by concepts such as immunities or the respect for its judicial organs serves to protect human rights, albeit indirectly.

Part III The Current International Law of State Immunity, 14 Immunity from Adjudication: The Employment Exception in respect of (1) A Foreign State and (2) An International Organization

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fox Hazel ◽  
Webb Philippa
Keyword(s):  
Collective Bargaining ◽  
International Law ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
International Organization ◽  
Labour Law ◽  
National Courts ◽  
State Immunity ◽  
Foreign State ◽  
Standard Terms ◽  
Sick Pay

This chapter examines the exception for employment as it pertains to States and international organizations. Whilst the employment — its terms for performance, remuneration, including sick pay, overtime, and other benefits, notice and procedures for dismissal or termination — may be provided in an individual contract or imported from standard terms of employment or collective bargaining agreements, there may also be a considerable overlay of statutory or mandatory provisions that the national labour law imposes or in respect of which increasingly the forum State has assumed regional or international law obligations. There are also certain generally accepted practices relating to employment to be taken into account in considering the scope of the immunity of a foreign State and international organization as regards employment claims brought before the national courts of another State.

The Law of State Immunity

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fox Hazel ◽  
Webb Philippa
Keyword(s):  
High Profile ◽  
International Crimes ◽  
National Courts ◽  
State Immunity ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
The Law ◽  
Extraterritorial Jurisdiction ◽  
Universal Civil Jurisdiction ◽  
International Rule ◽  
Relevant Material

Revised and updated to include recent developments since 2013, this new edition provides a detailed guide to the operation of the international rule of State immunity which bars one State's national courts from exercising criminal or civil jurisdiction over claims made against another State. Building on the analysis of its two previous editions, it reviews relevant material at both international and national levels with particular attention to US and UK law; the 2004 UN Convention on Jurisdictional Immunities of the State and its Property (not yet in force), and also seeks to assess the significance of recent changes in the evolution of the law. Although the restrictive doctrine of immunity is now widely observed by which foreign States may be sued in national courts for their commercial transactions, the immunity rule remains controversial, not only by reason of the recognition of a single State's right to deny a remedy for a wrong — China, a major trading State, continues to adhere to the absolute bar — but also by the exclusion of any reparation or relief for the commission on the orders of a State of grave human rights violations. The complexity and moral challenge of the issues is illustrated by high profile cases. The expanding extraterritorial jurisdiction of national courts with regard to torture in disregard of pleas of act of State and nonjusticiability offers a further challenge to the exclusionary nature and continued observance of State immunity. Recent developments in key areas are examined, including: impleading; public policy and non-justiciability; universal civil jurisdiction for reparation for international crimes; the application of the employment exception to embassies and diplomats; immunity from enforcement and procedural measures; immunity of State officials, and tensions between national constitutional requirements and superior international norms.

Incorporation

2020 ◽  
pp. 80-107
Author(s):  
Pavlos Eleftheriadis
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Eu Law ◽  
Member States ◽  
National Courts ◽  
Law Of Nations ◽  
International Legal Order ◽  
Structural Principles ◽  
The Law ◽  
Political Communities ◽  
The Eu

This chapter shows how national courts receive European Union (EU) law by way of dualism in the same way they receive international law. From the member states’ point of view EU law is not the law of a new jurisdiction but the law of an international legal order. Incorporation is not a simple transfer. Member state courts incorporate EU law through three structural principles: ‘conditional primacy’, ‘institutional tolerance’, and ‘integrity’. These principles are uniquely relevant to the transnational nature of EU law. The member states remain independent political communities. Integrity, thus, applies to EU law on the basis that the EU is a community of communities of principle. The ideals of a community of principle apply to the EU only when it is seen as a union of peoples that come together on the basis of the law of nations. The practical or deliberative understanding of law provides an account of the relationship between domestic and EU law without paradox.

Part II The Sources of the Law of State Immunity, 6 The Restrictive Doctrine of State Immunity: Its Recognition in State Practice

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fox Hazel ◽  
Webb Philippa
Keyword(s):  
Civil Law ◽  
National Courts ◽  
State Immunity ◽  
The Us ◽  
State Practice ◽  
History Of ◽  
General Recognition ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Uk ◽  
International Law Commission

This chapter recalls the history of the law of State immunity through the decisions of the national courts in both common and civil law jurisdictions and recounts the general recognition in common and civil law jurisdictions of the restrictive doctrine as well as its adoption by national legislation in 1976 in the US (the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act 1976 (FSIA)) and in 1978 in the UK (the State Immunity Act 1978 (SIA)) followed by similar legislation in some Commonwealths and other countries. The conclusion drawn from State practice in surveys conducted by the International Law Commission (ILC) and the Council of Europe is that there is wide and ever increasing support for a restrictive doctrine of immunity.

9. Immunities from National Jurisdiction

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Dixon ◽  
Robert McCorquodale ◽  
Sarah Williams
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Organisations ◽  
Sovereign Immunity ◽  
State Immunity ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Head Of State ◽  
National Jurisdiction ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Heads Of State ◽  
The Relationship

States and international organisations and their representatives in the courts of other States enjoy immunity from legal process. This immunity can be split conveniently into State (or sovereign) immunity, and diplomatic and consular immunities. The first concerns foreign States per se (including the Head of State), while the second concerns the personal immunities enjoyed by representatives of those States. This chapter discusses the general principles of state immunity in international law; state immunity in the United Kingdom; Heads of State and other holders of high-ranking office; the relationship between immunity and acts contrary to international law; the immunities of international organisations and their staff; and diplomatic and consular immunities.

Responsibility and Immunities

2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Orakhelashvili
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
International Organizations ◽  
Legal System ◽  
Present Contribution ◽  
Relative Growth ◽  
The Past ◽  
International Legal System ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Relationship

Over the past couple of decades, the relative growth of the human-oriented element in the international legal system has been one of the defining characteristics of the process of its evolution. Rules, instruments, practices and institutions for protecting individuals in peacetime as well as during times of war keep multiplying and becoming more imperative. How does the law respond to underlying the dilemmas this presents: through developing a system of effective remedies, or by admitting and tolerating substantial gaps in accountability? The present contribution covers the law of the responsibility of international organizations and the multiple grounds of attribution under it, mainly focusing on the International Law Commission’s Draft Articles on the Responsibility of International Organizations and their applicability in practice. It also focuses on the immunities of international organizations, their sources and scope, and on the relationship between their competing or conflicting standards. There is more inter-dependence between the standards under the law of responsibility and those under the law of immunities than often meets the eye, and such inter-dependence is dictated by the orderly operation of both these branches of international law.

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